


The Best Is Yet To Come

by alestar



Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Don't Overthink It, Intimacy Disorder, KakaGai Week 2017, M/M, Pakkun's A+ Parenting, Post-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-26 02:12:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13225992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alestar/pseuds/alestar
Summary: Kakashi has spent nearly his entire life in a freefall state, bracing himself for impact, turning his body to absorb the blow and land on his feet. Now in his early thirties he finds the rapid winds of gravity dying down around him. He finds himself crouching on solid ground. A moment of disorientation, followed by what?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. This is an expanded version of a story I wrote for kakagai week 2014-- now completed for kakagai week 2017-- for the prompt "Gai's birthday." That is my natural pace. 
> 
> 2\. Stories where Kakashi is asexual are fantastic and also extremely believable, but this is not one of those stories.
> 
> 3\. I wrote most of this in my head during a roadtrip while listening to Vance Joy’s “Mess Is Mine” on repeat for literally four hours straight. If you watch [the official video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1C816p-KTNk) for that song and replace all the drunks with ninjas, it can be viewed as a movie of Kakashi's inner life. 
> 
> This story is 50% brought to you by that song and 50% brought to you by [this beautiful artwork](http://variksenpelatin.tumblr.com/post/103765247136/whatever-u-say-gai) by Kaskyy.

Kakashi gets to know Rock Lee a lot better in the months following the Fourth Ninja War. Even with all the arrangements to be made as Tsunade steps down as Hokage and Kakashi prepares to take her place, Kakashi is the second most frequent visitor to Gai's hospital bedside after Lee. Kakashi stands in the doorway watching Lee chat as Gai finishes up his physical therapy session, and Lee stands in the doorway watching as Kakashi does the same.

Lee isn't quite what Kakashi expects. It's a hard time for Team Gai, and he expects a heaviness every time he sees the younger man. He knows better than anyone what it does to a shinobi to lose a team member, and in that aftermath Lee must also watch his beloved sensei's struggle with incapacity. He imagines Lee lecturing Gai on keeping his courage, standing behind Gai's wheelchair, taking on all those duties that Gai took on for Lee after the Chuunin Exams with a brave solemnity.

Instead, Lee seems steady. Gai laughs-- of course Gai laughs-- and Lee laughs with him. They are all putting on brave faces-- but Kakashi always expects Lee's expression to slip into sorrow and concern as he gazes elsewhere, turning away from his sensei's bed, and it never does.

"You do a good job keeping Gai's spirits up," Kakashi says to Lee one day, as they are waiting together in the hospital hallway. It seems like a properly Hokage-like thing to say, supportive and paternal, but Kakashi mostly says it to feel Lee out.

Lee says, "Thank you, Hokage-sama, but Gai-sensei doesn't need his spirits kept up. He is full of youthful energy and manly resolve!"

Kakashi nods. "That's true. But being an active shinobi was always Gai's dream. It would be understandable for him to take retirement pretty hard."

Kakashi expects Lee to smile, to say something about nothing getting Gai-sensei down. But instead the younger man looks sideways at Kakashi with a strange expression Kakashi has seen on his face with increasing frequency. Something watchful and speculative, eyebrows drawn together, trying to take in something about Kakashi.

"He says that there are new, passionate adventures before him."

Kakashi raises an eyebrow. "Oh?"

Lee's manner toward Kakashi was always one of respectful distance-- his beloved sensei's eternal rival-- but now that Kakashi is Hokage, Lee seems oddly less distant, and that adds to the mystery.

Lee drops his gaze to the floor, but Kakashi can still see a thoughtfulness there. He nods and puts his hands on his hips; he glances up fleetingly at Kakashi once more. Seeing what?

"He said there are many ways to take care of your important people."

 

+

 

Maito Gai is, in fact, a genius of rallying. Whatever his mysterious new self-appointed mission is, whatever he has confided in Lee, he takes to his crutches and his wheelchair with barely a frown. Within two weeks of being discharged from the hospital, he has won seven of ten wheelchair races against Kakashi, and he has scaled the Hokage Monument twice. The whole thing keeps Sakura in a constant state of near apoplectic outrage.

But Gai will never be an active-duty shinobi again. One by one, and with a series of mournful sighs, he pulls his green jumpsuits out of his closet and folds them into a box, possibly for indefinite storage, possibly for Lee, while Kakashi leans against his bedroom door jamb with his hands in his pockets. He keeps one suit in his closet in case of special formal occasions but otherwise starts to favor jinbei and yukatas. He has one recurring outfit comprised of a pair of loose, green fisherman pants and an old mesh shirt, and it makes him look like a happy, athletic civilian rather than a dilapidated ninja. After thirty years of seeing Gai in different iterations of the same uniform, it's weird to see him in a steady rotation of different clothes-- Wednesday's outfit different from Tuesday's outfit, etc.

This is the new Gai-sensei, Kakashi supposes, sprawled over Gai's couch one evening, surreptitiously watching Gai over a sheaf of mission reports stacked on Kakashi's stomach. The thought makes him feel strange.

Gai glances up from his book and sees Kakashi watching him. He smiles, paperback falling against his dark, short-sleeved shirt, and flashes Kakashi a thumbs-up. Kakashi returns it.

 

+

 

They spend a lot of time together after the war. Kakashi doesn't want Gai to get depressed, and over their long history Gai has certainly done the same for him.

Gai, for his part, asks carefully a couple of times if Kakashi has been to the Memorial Stone, which Kakashi takes as his way of asking about Obito. How is Kakashi dealing with having built his identity for two decades on a falsehood? How is he dealing with the fact that his erstwhile saint helped murder his sensei and many other Konoha shinobi? Kakashi evades the question, but he acknowledges to himself that Gai is asking it.

Before the war, it was their habit to hang out between missions, though that usually involved Gai pestering Kakashi while Kakashi tried to skulk around alone. Gai's less mobile now, so Kakashi picks up the slack and begins to at least skulk in Gai's immediate vicinity. Kakashi has a desk job, now, functionally, and Gai is training to take up a position at the Academy teaching anatomy and physiology. Aside from Kakashi's occasional diplomatic trips to the capital, their time between missions is now _all_ of their time.

One night, Kakashi is leaving the office when the belated realization that Gai won’t be taking further missions literally stops him in his tracks.

It’s 8 o'clock, and Kakashi is headed to Gai’s apartment with a bag of take-out. He stops walking, and his ANBU escort stops walking.

It occurs to him that unless something extraordinarily good or extraordinarily bad happens, Gai will never leave Konoha on another mission. Tenten and Lee have been reassigned, and ties between the hidden villages of the Five Nations have never been stronger, so the chances of invasion are relatively slim. Gai is staying; he is not leaving. He made it.

Despite almost every likelihood, Gai made it, and it is now likely that he will survive into his old age. It is likely that they both will.

Kakashi has spent nearly his entire life in a freefall state, bracing himself for impact, turning his body to absorb the blow and land on his feet. Now in his early thirties he finds the rapid winds of gravity dying down around him. He finds himself crouching on solid ground. A moment of disorientation, followed by what?

 

+

 

"What do you want for your birthday?" Kakashi asks.

It’s three days before the new year, close to 10 o'clock at night. Kakashi claimed to be stopping by on his way home, but it’s an obvious lie, since Gai’s apartment is no longer between the Administrative Offices and where Kakashi ostensibly lives.

Gai is leaned back in his wheelchair, wearing a green yukata tied loosely around a simple white t-shirt. He sets aside his cup of tea on the living room end table and smiles up at the other man. "Your presence at my party will be a splendid honor in itself, Hokage-sama."

Despite Kakashi's protests (largely non-verbal), Gai refuses to call him his rival anymore, but he has taken up other decorative titles. He uses various flowery versions of _my friend_ , with adjectives appropriate to the situation, and sometimes he calls him just _Kakashi_ , and Kakashi likes that best.

Kakashi digs his hands into his pockets, standing over him, and nudges Gai's knee with his own. He supposes that means he's standing too close, but Gai has been putting up with Kakashi's eccentricities for a long time. Has been actively seeking them out for a long time.

"You can probably do better than that," Kakashi says.

Gai smiles broadly until the light catches his teeth and Kakashi nudges his knee again.

He lifts an eyebrow. "Can I?"

 

+

 

Gai’s birthday rolls around, and Kakashi ends up not getting him anything but his presence at his birthday party anyway. Things are busy in the Hokage’s office, and Kakashi partly forgets and partly just isn’t good at those things-- but Gai doesn’t seem to mind. His party is at the administrative offices because there’s no room in his apartment for everyone who attends.

Hatake Kakashi was born to greatness, but Maito Gai really did succeed in becoming a superstar out of nothing.

His birthday presents in years past have been heavy on weapons and weighted apparel items, but this year it's mostly booze and turtled-themed household goods, plus Lee gave him the gift of carrying TenTen thirty times around the village, which seems like a shitty present to Kakashi, but Gai is deeply moved by it.

Kurenai makes a toast to Gai's good health, to a raucous round of applause, and then Genma jostles Gai's shoulder and says loudly, "Joke's on you, buddy." He juts his thumb at Kakashi, who is standing against the far wall, holding an untouched drink. "Now that you’re retired you’ll have to do the _real_ dirty work of taking care of this guy."

Gai smiles and says, "The most noble challenge yet!"

At that, Sakura looks at Kakashi and Lee looks at Gai, both of their faces shifting into identical expressions of fondness. Gai looks happily from Genma to Kakashi, and suddenly Kakashi can feel the line of everyone’s attention stretching between them. He feels very sharply that their bond is more articulated, more public, than Kakashi’s bonds with Genma, Kurenai or Shizune.

For one dizzying moment, Kakashi has the urge to walk over to Gai; to look back at Sakura and Lee and everyone else at the party while standing next to Gai, hand on his shoulder, and make it very clear that Gai is taking care of him.

Instead, he raises his drink in a salute from across the room and says indolently, "Well, if anyone could."

 

+

 

For all of his (deserved) reputation for dramatics, the truth is that Gai is an expert at moderation. Nobody becomes a taijutsu master-- let alone a taijutsu master of Gai's skill-- without knowing his limits. In his life Kakashi has been hospitalized for over-exerting himself about twenty times, and Gai probably twice.

Kakashi thinks about that with half his attention, while the other half reads through requisition reports at the base of a cliff in one of the training fields, leaning back against a felled log as Gai runs through his gamut of physical therapy exercises nearby. 

Gai will never be the field shinobi that he was, but his leg will serve him well enough for everyday life, even travel. He's been following Sakura's therapy regimen with diligence and exactness-- like one of his crazy challenges, only this time the challenge is patience.

He shifts forward on his right leg, incrementally, with his left leg drawn up to his stomach.  He moves carefully, back straight, bending at the knee, his face quiet with concentration-- feeling for vulnerability in the mechanism, withdrawing when it’s necessary, pushing when he can.

As Kakashi watches, Gai extends himself and then halts, prudently, waiting, and suddenly the truth of Kakashi’s relationship with Gai becomes clear.

Kakashi looks up at the sky, expression bored, listening to Gai's soft sounds of exertion. He watches the clouds pass by slowly overhead, one by one. He can sense the small coal of panic inside him waiting to ignite.

 

.


	2. Chapter 2

Strange but true facts about Konoha's Copy-Nin:

 

1.

Kakashi was eight years old the first time he killed someone.  He was on a D-rank mission to pick up weapons supplies from a city near the coast of Fire Country.  

His early life as a Chuunin was a strange one.  Until war broke out in earnest, the village administrators didn't have much for him to do; he was an asset if only in name, the son of the White Fang, and not to be squandered recklessly-- but nobody really wanted to work with an 8-year-old, so he mostly ended up with missions below his skill level.

So Kakashi at eight years old was waiting in an alley in the weapons sector of the city, his teammates inside negotiating a price, when he was attacked-- presumably by someone who wanted to victimize a child but who was too stupid to recognize a ninja.  

Kakashi could easily have deflected the attack, or just escaped-- he played the scene again and again in his mind for years afterwards, and now he can see a hundred alternatives-- but for all his sparring and theoretical practice, he was caught off guard.  Before he knew it he had reacted with lethal force.

There was more blood than he expected.  He'd never fought an actual enemy, so he'd never _actually_ cut someone's throat, only pantomimed it-- but the neck of the man in the alley bled for a long time while Kakashi hung in the shadows, feeling like he shouldn't leave till it was over.  His teammates came around the corner laughing and fell silent.

Later, he filed a report with Konoha's administrative office per Section III.9.4a of the regulations handbook.  It was Kakashi's first experience of realizing how much of life cannot be prepared for in advance.

 

2.

Kakashi has a decent sexual history, but he mostly just prefers to be left alone.  He reads his romance novels, where the encounters are extraordinarily different and even unrecognizable from his own.  

He has slept with twelve people in his life, five women and seven men.  Only two of those people did he sleep with more than once, and only one of those did he sleep with multiple times over multiple days.  Only twice has he had sex without his mask on, and both of those partners are now deceased.  

At seventeen, he lost his virginity to a civilian woman in the Fire Country capital while he was serving as ANBU captain.  It was a time when Kakashi was so far away from himself that he could do anything and it wouldn't be affiliated with him.  He never hurt anyone he slept with-- many shinobi did, though not _his_ shinobi-- but it was always impersonal and usually anonymous.  Needful but not affectionate.  

"Show me your face, honey," the Fire Country woman said tenderly, and in the heat of the moment Kakashi complied.

They were facing each other, the woman's legs wrapped around Kakashi's hips. It would have been safer to take her from behind, but even then, even at Kakashi's coldest, that wasn't what he wanted.  

He bent his head forward and let her tug his mask down while his hips moved against her.  Whatever she saw there, on his face, she liked it.  She groaned and clutched at his hair, slender fingers wrapping around his neck.

Kakashi remembers feeling disappointed, though he didn't realize it until later.  In the moment he just kept pressing on like the professional he was.  The woman ran her soft fingers over his jaw, the corner of his mouth, over his lips-- and he felt just as anonymous, just as unaffiliated.  Even more like a stranger: temporary, fictitious. No one.

  
  
3.

Not long after the close of the Fourth War, the realization wakes Kakashi in the middle of the night: that it all could have been prevented if he had gone after Obito's body.

He would have found Obito's remains missing, then reported their absence to Minato-sensei. Konoha would have assumed that enemy shinobi had stolen the body in order to discover the secrets of the Sharingan.  A mission would have gone out to retrieve the corpse-- probably Inuzuka, eventually Earth jutsu users-- and they would have discovered the network of tunnels. They would have rescued a scarred but healing Obito-- and thereby also a decrepit, defenseless Madara, before it was too late.

Kakashi stares into the dark of his room while the whole scenario plays out.  

The only reason he didn't go back for the body was because he didn't want to see it.  He claimed it had been crushed entirely because he couldn't stand even the thought of Obito's form evacuated of its passion and sweetness.  As though he could make it not exist by not thinking about it.

Thousands of lives lost, Minato-sensei lost, Obito lost; the entire Uchiha Clan lost; Naruto's arm, Sasuke's arm, Gai's leg lost.  For what?  For sentiment.

 

4.

Years ago, Kakashi convinced Tenzou that he sleepwalks.  They were in ANBU together, and he told Tenzou it was a dangerous situation.  He said that if Tenzou ever found Kakashi sleepwalking, he was not to touch him-- rather, Kakashi could only be woken by the sound of someone slapping the back of their hand twice in rapid succession, a subconscious signal that the Hokage himself had programmed.  

He sleepwalked, he told Tenzou, because he had bad dreams about his father.  Kakashi likes to do that-- to reveal true things in the context of a joke.  It is like sharing but with fewer complications.

By now he has kept up the lie for over a decade.  Last year, Kakashi and Tenzou and Naruto were on their way to Iron Country, and he overheard Tenzou quietly asking Naruto whether Kakashi's sleepwalking was still an issue and Naruto confessing (which was also hilarious) that he wasn't sure.

The whole thing is arbitrary and pointless, but whenever Kakashi thinks of it, it makes him feel warm and happy.  It's the funniest thing he's ever heard of.

He knows it's kind of demented to treasure a lie-- but it's not the falsehood he enjoys so much as the continuity.  As much as Kakashi loves getting Tenzou to pay for lunch all the time, free lunch is not really the _point_.  He likes one-sided jokes. They connect specific individuals to him with lines like ninja thread stretched invisibly across a clearing.  They are objects of beauty with a worth that is secret.  Lines of attachment that, if necessary, can mean nothing.    

 

5.

Over the years, every now and then, Kakashi has given some thought to trying his hand at writing.  

Since Jiraiya's death, he hasn't found anyone capable of imitating the old master's somatic detail or gift for pacing-- and Kakashi really _does_ have a way with words.  

He comes up with plots while he's on missions, and often he is thinking about his own stories while looking down at the pages of his favorite books. He has definitely sat through multiple meetings thinking about what if two characters were there at the meeting, and they were secretly in love with each other.  

Kakashi's favorite story to think about is one about a minor prince who falls in love with a renowned flute-maker in his village, even though he's betrothed to another.  To show the flute-maker favor, the prince writes a instrumental composition under a false name, and into it he pours all of his love and desire.  He summons the flute-maker to court to commission one hundred flutes for his court orchestra to play the piece; the prince is cold to the flute-maker, to disguise his true feelings, but the commission is enough to make the flute-maker's fortune.

At first the flute-maker is ecstatic, but as he reviews the composition, he finds himself unspeakably moved by its beauty and melancholy and yearning.  He knows, somehow, that the composer has written this song just for him and to share it with the prince would be a betrayal.  He returns to court the next day to refuse the commission-- but he delivers a flute he has spent all night making.  It is unmatched in its perfection of form and sound.  He asks the prince to deliver the flute to the composer, and the prince coldly agrees.  

In secret, the prince treasures the flute, and he begins to play from inside the walls of his castle every night.  He writes new compositions, and the haunting melodies drift through the village and into the window of the flute-maker, who lies in bed listening, night after night.  

After nearly a year of this, the time comes for the prince to get married, and the castle fills with dignitaries. When the sun sets, the prince withdraws to his garden for privacy and begins to play one last, loving song.  The flute-maker is drawn to it, above all the other songs his composer has played, and soon he finds himself standing outside the garden wall, feeling that his heart will break.  He begins to climb the wall, although he knows if he's discovered he will surely be mistaken for a thief and executed for trespassing.  Just as the song is ending, the flute-maker finally makes it to the top of the stone wall, only to see the prince, desolate, sitting on a stone bench with the flute pressed to his lips.  

There's a side plot involving two of the prince's attendants, and that provides most of the sex scenes in the story, aside from the two main characters privately jacking off and very graphic descriptions of flutes.  

If Kakashi ever writes it he'll call it _Heart-Song_ or _Song of the Heart_ or maybe _Forbidden Flute_.  He probably won't, so it doesn't matter-- but it is fun to think about.  He loves the doubleness of it.  He doesn't spend much time considering what comes next in the story, after the garden scene, or how it might end; he focuses on the lead-up to that one moment of discovery, which he rolls over and over in his head.

 

 

.


	3. Chapter 3

It's one o'clock in the morning when Kakashi undoes the wards on Gai's apartment and lets himself in. He pushes open the bedroom door and steps in, silent by habit-- but Gai is already sitting up in bed, one strong hand pressed flat against the mattress, his other hand holding a kunai in the folds of the blanket.

"Kakashi?" he says, voice rough from sleep.

Kakashi puts his hands in his pockets and stands in the dimness. "Yo."

Neither of them speaks for a long moment. Gai waits patiently, sitting and watching, blanket pooled around his bare stomach.

Finally, Kakashi shifts his gaze to his own feet. "Is it okay if I stay?"

There's another stretch of silence before Gai says, "This is your home, my friend. Of course you can stay."

Kakashi nods wordlessly. He walks over to the window and pulls down the dark green shade, blocking the moonlight, and then he slowly undresses down to his boxers, making a neat pile on top of Gai's dresser. With a quiet sigh he pulls off his black undershirt with its attached mask. He runs a hand over his naked face and through his hair.

He walks over to the bed, pulls up the blankets and slides in as Gai makes room for him. It's a wide bed, and they could lie without touching, but Kakashi doesn't-- he moves to the middle of the bed, pressing up along Gai, who settles on his back. Kakashi rests on his side, folding his right arm under his head; his left hand settles in the tender crook of Gai's elbow.

They lay like that for a moment until Kakashi shifts forward, and he traces his mouth over the curve of Gai's bicep, lips barely parted.

When Gai doesn't move, Kakashi lifts himself up and leans over him. He holds himself up while Gai watches him through the dark, then he bends to rest his forehead over Gai’s heart. Gai’s whole body is so warm, and his smell is so familiar. He can hear Gai’s heartbeat. It is thundering, even though Gai’s arms remain at his sides. Kakashi runs a hand up his chest to his neck, pressing two fingers against his carotid artery. His pulse is fast.

Gai does move then-- he pulls Kakashi's fingers away from his throat and lifts them to press a chaste kiss against the back of Kakashi's hand. Kakashi squeezes Gai's fingers, then he shifts, moving to lie beside Gai again. He brings Gai's fist to his mouth to return the kiss.

He lets his mouth rest against the back of Gai's hand, moving softly over the knuckles. Then he presses his forehead there, breathing deeply.

"Okay," Kakashi says, voice thin.

"Okay," says Gai.

 

+

 

Kakashi wakes the next morning with sunlight poking around the window shade, Gai lying beside him with his eyes closed. There's a foot of space between their warm bodies. Kakashi slips noiselessly out of bed and over to the pile of clothes he left on the dresser, then looks back at his friend.

Gai's dark hair is mussed, sticking up at odd angles against the pillow. His chest rises and falls evenly. It's a good imitation of sleep, but Kakashi has been on enough missions with Gai to know that he rarely sleeps past sunrise, and he would never sleep through someone climbing out of bed next to him. He'll keep his eyes closed until Kakashi is ready, clothed, mask in place, possibly in the living room, possibly elsewhere entirely.

Kakashi goes back to the bed and sits down.

With a sigh, he touches the tip of Gai's nose.

Gai's eyes open and his mouth curves. Kakashi watches him, expression neutral, as he traces the bridge of Gai's nose, then the thick line of his eyebrow, down over his cheek and then up into his dark hair, letting Gai look at him. He likes touching Gai. He can see Gai's soft smile, but he avoids meeting his eyes.

Then he drops his hand and turns, facing the window, resting his feet on the floor.

"I have a bunch of meetings today," he says, voice weary, even though he just woke up.

He feels the gentle brush of Gai's knuckles against his back. "Then I will make us a nutritious and sustaining breakfast!"

Gai throws on his robe and hobbles out to the kitchen, letting Kakashi dress in private. Kakashi lifts the window shade and follows him a few minutes later with his mask pooled around his neck. Gai glances over as Kakashi seats himself at the table, but he doesn't say anything.

He tosses a pair of chopsticks and a packet of soy sauce to Kakashi, who catches them, and then Gai cracks two eggs into two microwaved bowls of rice and brings them to the table. "Itadakimas!" he says, then he digs in with the same gusto he brings to everything, while Kakashi stirs his rice and concentrates on eating slowly, even with another human in the room.

Gai will begin teaching at the start of the next trimester, and Kakashi wonders if he'll begin to settle into a teacher's hours, and buy groceries, and not subsist on microwave rice and sauce packets, and whether he'll be able to shake off the decades-old habits that Kakashi is also learning to slough off: those of impermanence, of a man taking rest between missions.

When the kettle sounds and Gai comes back to the table with two cups of tea, he says, "You look different than you did in the Infinite Tsukuyomi genjutsu."

He doesn't say it casually, but Gai never says anything casually, voice deep and earnest-- and when Kakashi looks up at him, Gai is only gazing at Kakashi with a happily crooked mouth, pushing a cup of tea across the table toward him. He doesn't necessarily have the look of someone confessing that in his fantasy, in his _ideal reality_ , some situation unfolded that involved Kakashi's naked face.

Kakashi rubs the bridge of his nose-- one of the dozen little gestures he will find his body inventing in order to keep something in front of his face. He smiles wryly. "Sorry."

His other hand is on the table, curled loosely near his cup of tea, and Gai reaches across to touch it with the backs of his fingers. It's the same gesture he used to touch Kakashi's back in the bed: a way of reaching out without seeming to grab. It's the same way Kakashi would greet an unfamiliar dog-- extending his hand palm-down, relaxed, letting the dog approach warily and sniff. It makes Kakashi's chest feel tight.

"No, my friend, it's better," Gai says, smile breaking out in full, stroking a knuckle over the back of Kakashi's hand. "That's what's amazing! You are better than my best dream."

Kakashi feels his face heat, and the hand in front of his face moves to scratch at his eyebrow. He doesn't know what to say to that. His fingers spread out over his eyebrow as he looks down at the table, while the fingers of his other hand, resting on the table, turn and interlock with Gai's.

 

+

 

That evening Kakashi finishes with the last budget review meeting a little after 8PM, and he picks up a bag of take-out barbecue on his way to Gai's apartment. He lets himself in, waves the bag at Gai, who is looking up from his sofa, where he's sewing something, then stuffs the bag in the fridge and moves on to the bedroom.

When Gai opens the bedroom door a half-hour later, Kakashi is sitting in the bed reading _Icha Icha_ , blankets pulled up to his bare stomach.

Gai walks to his side of the bed, leans his crutch against the bedside table, strips down to his boxers and then slides into bed. "Good night, my friend," he says, rolling to face the wall, his broad shoulder slouched comfortably in a nest of blankets.

"Night," says Kakashi. He sets his book on the bedside table, turns off lamp, then rolls over to sleep.

 

+

 

And so Hatake Kakashi finds himself dating Maito Gai in the most abnormal way possible.

They never talk about what they are doing with each other, but they do talk about their respective days. Kakashi complains about every decision the Fire Daimyo makes, and Gai offers his advice. Kakashi listens to Gai's descriptions of his future students and the other teachers; Kakashi offers mostly only crass commentary, but Gai doesn't seem to mind.

Sometimes Gai cooks while Kakashi reads, or Kakashi cooks while Gai does push-ups. After a month, Kakashi's staff stops supplying the Hokage Residence and sends runners, whenever Kakashi isn't in his office, to Gai's apartment. Kakashi amasses a collection of four paperbacks there, and at that point he starts to think of it as _their_ apartment.

At night, the backs of their arms brush, and sometimes Kakashi will turn on his side and curl his hand around Gai's bicep or rest it on Gai's stomach over the blanket, and Gai will set his hand over top of Kakashi's.

Kakashi gets used to being around Gai without his mask on. Gai seems to get used to it as well-- though Kakashi sees him several times with his face turned away, down, looking at something with a faint flush, and Kakashi thinks Gai was probably staring at him. Kakashi thinks it's unfortunate for him to be always hanging around the apartment half-naked with an intimacy disorder, so he showers at the office.

 

+

 

It's apparent to everyone that Kakashi and Gai are living together, but they co-habitated in the bachelor barracks for several years, and Kakashi has had a whole lifetime to develop his reputation as an eccentric in Konoha, so he could live anywhere and it wouldn't necessarily have sexual connotations. The only one who _doesn't_ find Kakashi's relationship with Gai ambiguous is Pakkun, and he's pretty mean about it.

"You're like 230 in dog years," he says. "It's time for you to settle down."

They're sitting on the floor of the balcony outside Kakashi's office, with the door drawn closed, eating lunch. Kakashi is cradling a chicken onigiri, and Pakkun is leaned over a small dish of raw ground beef.

"I am settled," Kakashi says, chewing disconsolately. "I have a desk job."

"You seem a little unsettled."

"You're unsettling me."

Pakkun shrugs. "You smell like a bitch in heat."

Kakashi rubs his face. "Please stop saying that."

"It's not crass when dogs say it." The pug licks his chops, then noses his food bowl away from him. "Look, boss-- who first taught you about the birds and the bees?"

"You did," Kakashi says. "I was too young, and it scarred me."

"You were _twelve_. And frankly you were already pretty scarred."

Kakashi leans his head back against the wall. "I wish this demented pep talk would be over."

Pakkun wanders over to Kakashi's leg, which is stretched out under the afternoon sun, the dark fabric of his uniform hot to the touch. He puts a tiny paw on Kakashi's knee. "I'm just saying you always make things harder than they need to be."

"I like peace," Kakashi says, eyes sliding closed.

"You like stasis."

"That's what I said."

"Look," huffs Pakkun, "I don't care what you do. Nona's the one who's invested." Nona is Pakkun's eldest daughter. Pakkun is like 1000 in dog years. "Every time I see her she asks when you're getting married."

Kakashi cracks open an eye. "Tell Nona I am never getting married."

"I'll tell her you're getting married when you grow a pair," Pakkun says, returning to his food bowl. "That'll mean the same thing."

 

+

 

It's a morning in early July.

The days are long and quiet; Shizune and Shikamaru are on leave for two weeks, and Kakashi spends most of his time frowning over proposals for a computer lab and mulling over ideas for municipal task forces, both of which he mostly does from home. Over the last few months he's actually settled into a pretty regular sleep schedule, but the unstructured days of a sleepy Konoha summer have thrown him off, and he finds himself dozing in the middle of the day, working in the middle of the night, waking at the first blush of early morning light.

The dawn has just begun to slip rosy fingers past the green shade on their bedroom window when Kakashi cracks his eyes open. Gai is still sleeping softly next to him, and Kakashi could probably reach his _Icha Icha_ on the bedside table without waking him, but instead he watches the burgeoning light on the walls, the rise and fall of Gai's chest, letting his mind wander.

Gai is sleeping on his back, where he usually ends up-- and in the summer heat he's covered by one thin sheet. The outline of his erection is clearly visible.

It's morning wood and doesn't indicate arousal; rather, the inhibitory mechanism in Gai's brain that moderates the blood flow is at rest during the deepest parts of Gai's slumber. But it looks like arousal. If Gai were aroused-- if he were hard from looking at Kakashi, from listening to Kakashi's voice-- it would look just like that. The gentle curve of his cock beneath the sheet.

Kakashi thinks about Pakkun's insistence that this is easy-- that some things are risky and terrible but that this is easy-- and he can imagine reaching out to touch, Gai's eyes fluttering open.

But then he hears Gai's voice saying, _You are better than my best dream_ , and the very thought has Kakashi curling in toward himself again.

There is something inside Kakashi that is equivalent, that he wants to be able to give Gai, but it is shadowy and unformed. The indistinctness reminds Kakashi of the process of realizing who the man called Tobi was, near the end of the Fourth War, more than a year ago now-- noting the remarkable facts, trying to synthesize the available data while his entire conscious mind worked against it.

At the time, he told himself, _Don't overthink it_.

At a certain point the conclusions became inevitable, and a small nervous breakdown followed until Gai brought him out of it. It is possible that only Gai _could_ have brought him out of it. What would it mean to remove that as a resource?

Kakashi has distrusted himself for a long time. In what has turned out to be one of the most precious things, growing quietly more and more precious as the years passed, he has opted for inaction. Do not _do_ anything. As a result, the bond has lasted. Anyone else that Kakashi has ever loved, Kakashi has killed or let down in some crucial way. But Gai is not dead; Gai has always been there for him. Gai is in bed with him right now.

In the light of those stakes and unsure of his own aptness, Kakashi welters between initiatives.

But when Kakashi pushes himself to think of what could change, he comes up empty. Kakashi tried on and off in his youth to dislodge the other man and failed, and by now they are practically old men. Where would either of them go? In the end, it has come to pass that the fact of Kakashi and Gai is absolute; it is already written in history.

 _The Friendship Duo_ , Kakashi thinks, turning his head on the pillow to stare at Gai. The Rokudaime Hokage and his wheelchair-bound companion. Reiketsu no Kakashi and his bombastic schoolteacher husband.

With a slow exhale, Kakashi reaches out and taps Gai's shoulder with a knuckle, like he's knocking on a door.

If he does something wrong, he supposes he will just do it again, differently, later. _Don't overthink it._

Gai's eyes open with full alertness, but when he finds Kakashi looking back at him, face neutral, his thick eyebrows gather in question. Kakashi's hand on his shoulder moves to brush the sheet down his chest, then tug it off entirely. Then with a sigh he throws his leg over the other man, settling down on top of him, the sleep-warm fabric of their boxers catching, erections pressing together.

Gai pulls in a long breath through his nose and brings his hands up to rest on Kakashi's sides, but otherwise he does nothing but watch Kakashi's face. Kakashi can feel his thigh flex under his own.

"Morning," Kakashi says.

"Good morning," Gai says, voice rough from sleep.

Kakashi shifts against Gai's cock. "You seem to have a bit of a problem there."

The color rises faintly in Gai's face, hands twitching on Kakashi's hips, but he says, "I do not see much of a problem, my friend."

Kakashi shakes his head. His mouth twists wryly. "It might be a problem."

Gai smiles and shrugs. "Perhaps." Not discounting the possibility, but accepting it. Kakashi's hands slip off of Gai's large shoulders onto the sheet beneath them. "Well, what are you waiting for then?" he says, lowering himself to his forearms, and he can see Gai lift one thick, incredulous eyebrow before their mouths touch.

Gai's mouth, like the rest of him, is large and warm and familiar. He lies open for Kakashi's touch, patient and trusting, unworried, letting Kakashi touch a careful tongue to his teeth, brush their noses together, breathe against him, press Gai's bottom lip between his. His smell has been a nearly constant presence for almost thirty years.

Their hips begin to move against each other, their breath coming faster, Gai's hands moving restlessly along Kakashi's rib cage and down his back. The fingers of one hand dip below the waistband of Kakashi's boxers, and then Kakashi pulls back, looking down at Gai's face. Gai's hands drop to the bed, face blank, waiting, watching-- but Kakashi grins and leans down for another kiss before sliding off of Gai, to lie beside him.

His own hand smoothes down Gai's chest, his stomach, down to cup where Gai's erection is leaking ejaculate through his boxers. Then Kakashi pushes past the boxers and wraps one strong hand around the base of his cock. He strokes once, and Gai's head falls back on the pillow with a long, quiet exhale. Like a sigh, only coming from his whole body.

Kakashi's eyes lift to his face, and he smirks. Gai's eyes narrow, head lifting-- and for the first time in Hatake Kakashi's life, Gai gives him the Look.

The Look is an expression of self-control mixed with exasperation, a look of taut heat: it generally appears in answer to an expression of smugness on Kakashi’s face. In the future, it will appear even when Gai has been waiting only minutes or seconds for Kakashi to do something, and not a couple of decades, as he has been now.

Kakashi and Gai will learn a great deal about each other in the days ahead.

For example, Gai will learn that Kakashi is a biter in bed-- is, in fact, completely orally-fixated-- but that sometimes he finds kissing overwhelming and invasive, and he needs to be ready for Kakashi to pull away and breathe against him, ready to touch Kakashi's hair while Kakashi calms himself.

He will learn that Kakashi likes to come first. Watching Gai come in the afterglow of his own release is like a second climax for Kakashi, and needing to come-- having Gai reach out to satisfy him after Gai has already spent-- invariably returns Kakashi to that old place of uneasiness and uncertainty.

But this generally works out because, Kakashi will learn, a lifetime of contending with Kakashi has eroticized waiting in Gai's mind. He loves to be pushed to the edge-- straining in the bounds of his own self-control, his own personal challenge: not coming for hours; listening to Kakashi talk dirty for _days_.

All of this Kakashi can only faintly see as his hand moves on Gai's cock for the first time, looking at Gai's face-- holding that gaze while he tightens his fist and pulls it up along the hard length. A whole second lifetime stretching in front of them: Gai's sweetness and patience and surprising watchfulness against Kakashi's quiet love and lechery and mischief. Konoha's Sublime Green Beast of Foreplay and his well-meaning lunatic husband.

 

+

 

Now that Kakashi is Hokage, his birthday is a matter of regional celebration, a political event, so he no longer has the option of keeping to himself. But he supposes he wouldn't have that option anyway, anymore, since no one loves birthdays as much as Maito Gai. Gai does agree to the keep their celebration low-key-- a counterweight to the pubic fanfare-- and he gives Kakashi his presents in the morning before they've gotten out of bed. Presents, plural, because Gai is giving him one for every hour of the day of his birth.

When Kakashi wakes, Gai blows him-- he's a little rough about it, the way Kakashi likes, pinning him against the bed with an arm like an iron bar across his stomach, holding Kakashi's leg out of the way with a hand wrapped too-tight around his calf. Then he jacks himself off onto Kakashi's chest while Kakashi shakes beneath him.

By then it's eight in the morning, so afterwards Gai gives him eight presents, though Kakashi argues in all fairness that after all that it should be seven. He gives Kakashi a romance novel, a slightly outdated book on computer programming, a hat for Pakkun, a pen, several weapons and a piece of paper.

"It's a poem about our beautiful love," Gai says, delighted.

"Thank you," Kakashi says, shaking his head, shoulders tense.

Gai lays back on the pillows, folding his arms behind his head, still looking pleased. "You can read it later."

Kakashi sighs. He pokes Gai in the thigh through the blanket. "I'm not very good at this."

Gai smiles broadly, teeth glinting. "My friend, you too can be a genius of hard work!"

Kakashi laughs at that. He nods, rubbing a thumb over his eyebrow, tucking his face behind his wrist, still smiling. "I will try to be a worthy rival."

 

.


End file.
